4 ms·

I don’t think there is a technical solution to this problem but I think there is a legal one. Make it a legal requirement to mark AI generated photos and enfor

I don’t think there is a technical solution to this problem but I think there is a legal one. Make it a legal requirement to mark AI generated photos and enforce penalties for posting unmarked AI generations. Social media should also mark the country of origin for each post, with the knowledge that posts from your own country are covered by these laws.

inigyou 2mo ago
The EU did this, Claude and Microsoft complied and HN was practically rioting about it literally yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421158
- tancop 2mo ago
  No, this would be literally you (the user) checking "this is AI generated" before you post something publicly. Platforms can auto mark it if they detect a watermark like SynthID but they can also leave the choice up to you. The point is making it easier to go after bot accounts that spam generated videos to influence politics. They need to disclose that its AI and lose their power or lie and get criminally prosecuted. It's not the same thing as model providers adding a mandatory watermark to everything, and even worse one you can't verify yourself and have to trust that Anthropic is telling everyone the truth. People should have the option to use undetectable AI tools in private, even if it's illegal to post the outputs on social media.
akoboldfrying 2mo ago
I think public key cryptography offers a technical solution that is nearly as ideal here as for its existing uses for securing communication between physically remote actors -- please see my comment here for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444227 I say "nearly", because as soon as you need to keep a private key secure from someone with direct physical access to the device, you're entering dangerous territory. TTBOMK there's no way to make a "perfect black box", so it becomes an arms race between defensive "obfuscation" and tamper detection mechanisms in the one hand and stealth scanning techniques on the other. But this is already the case for TPMs -- that is, the situation is no worse than for an already widely accepted technology.
lbriner 2mo ago
> Enforce penalties Really, everyone should know by now it is not as simple as that. We already have lots of laws that are not enforced (fully or at all) because there is a cost to enforcing the law - time and money. Some random person uploads an AI image to Facebook and you really expect the police to expend a few thousand $ prosecuting them for what? To Server as a warning? Some people will be untraceable. Some will claim innocence or mitigation or some disability that excuses them. Even those that might be prosecuted will be fined and won't pay which costs even more to follow up. We should know that the legal system does not create an obedient society.
SkyBelow 2mo ago
That hasn't done anything to stop scamming, so why would it apply to AI? People located outside of areas with these laws won't have to follow them, and this reduces building a immune system to such actions, making people more likely to fall for it when done by those not bound by the laws. In a real like political misinformation, this will have the effect of making people trust non-watermarked images more, which will then be used by foreign actors to pass off propaganda as legitimate. Also, if you don't hold people responsible for spreading an image they know is fake, bad actors can take advantage of this even within the US (they purposefully spread a image they have reason to think is fake but lacking a watermark), but holding people responsible for a strict liability crime for spreading AI without knowing it is AI seems an even worse route. I'm not sure a law even makes the issue better in a 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good' sort of way.

inigyou 2mo ago

The EU did this, Claude and Microsoft complied and HN was practically rioting about it literally yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421158

tancop 2mo ago
No, this would be literally you (the user) checking "this is AI generated" before you post something publicly. Platforms can auto mark it if they detect a watermark like SynthID but they can also leave the choice up to you. The point is making it easier to go after bot accounts that spam generated videos to influence politics. They need to disclose that its AI and lose their power or lie and get criminally prosecuted. It's not the same thing as model providers adding a mandatory watermark to everything, and even worse one you can't verify yourself and have to trust that Anthropic is telling everyone the truth. People should have the option to use undetectable AI tools in private, even if it's illegal to post the outputs on social media.

akoboldfrying 2mo ago

I think public key cryptography offers a technical solution that is nearly as ideal here as for its existing uses for securing communication between physically remote actors -- please see my comment here for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444227 I say "nearly", because as soon as you need to keep a private key secure from someone with direct physical access to the device, you're entering dangerous territory. TTBOMK there's no way to make a "perfect black box", so it becomes an arms race between defensive "obfuscation" and tamper detection mechanisms in the one hand and stealth scanning techniques on the other. But this is already the case for TPMs -- that is, the situation is no worse than for an already widely accepted technology.

lbriner 2mo ago

> Enforce penalties Really, everyone should know by now it is not as simple as that. We already have lots of laws that are not enforced (fully or at all) because there is a cost to enforcing the law - time and money. Some random person uploads an AI image to Facebook and you really expect the police to expend a few thousand $ prosecuting them for what? To Server as a warning? Some people will be untraceable. Some will claim innocence or mitigation or some disability that excuses them. Even those that might be prosecuted will be fined and won't pay which costs even more to follow up. We should know that the legal system does not create an obedient society.

SkyBelow 2mo ago

That hasn't done anything to stop scamming, so why would it apply to AI? People located outside of areas with these laws won't have to follow them, and this reduces building a immune system to such actions, making people more likely to fall for it when done by those not bound by the laws. In a real like political misinformation, this will have the effect of making people trust non-watermarked images more, which will then be used by foreign actors to pass off propaganda as legitimate. Also, if you don't hold people responsible for spreading an image they know is fake, bad actors can take advantage of this even within the US (they purposefully spread a image they have reason to think is fake but lacking a watermark), but holding people responsible for a strict liability crime for spreading AI without knowing it is AI seems an even worse route. I'm not sure a law even makes the issue better in a 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good' sort of way.